


our hearts are heavy burdens we shouldn't have to bear alone

by zanthetran



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, not Exactly thasmin but they are at the end, she obviously has depression but it's not talked about Specifically being that, yaz centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanthetran/pseuds/zanthetran
Summary: "The first time Yaz comes out, she's seven."a look through the various coming out's Yaz has throughout her life, leading up to the one Big Realization she'd been waiting her whole life for.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	our hearts are heavy burdens we shouldn't have to bear alone

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: hello back again. Sort of just ignored canon of Yaz having a different best friend when she was younger amongst other things but yanno 🤷🏼♂️. this fic is close to my Heart, some parts were pulled right from my own life and journey and figuring out my sexuality at a young age (and I know a lot of people also relate to that) and I hope I did it Justice.
> 
> Title from: goodnight moon by go radio

The first time Yaz comes out, she’s seven. She and her best friend Izzy decide they’re never going to get married to boys ( _ew_ ) and will just marry each other and be best friends the rest of their lives. Later that week, Najia and Hakim get an invitation in the mailbox, made out of construction paper and with their best penmanship on the front. The entire year both girls tell everyone in their class that they’re married and that means they have a lot of sleep overs and can’t have other best friends. They are known as _YazandIzzy._

They turn twelve together (Izzy’s first and then Yaz a month later) and by their thirteenth birthday, she hasn’t heard from Izzy in three months (she tries — and fails — to not let it get to her).

They end up at the same secondary school by chance, and are put in most of the same classes. For a brief time they become _YazandIzzy_ again.

The second time she comes out she’s in her bedroom with Izzy, painting each other’s nails while a movie plays in the background. She carefully keeps her eyes on Izzy’s feet when she says, “I think I like girls. Maybe.”

Izzy stops blowing on her fingernails and studies her and says, “what, like a lesbian?” Yaz doesn’t flinch at the way she says ‘ _lesbian_ ’ (like it’s dirty) but she wants to.

Yaz finishes off the last toe and caps the nail polish. She keeps her eyes carefully on her blue nails. “Yeah, I guess,” she says.

Izzy doesn’t respond.

They don’t speak for a month. Yaz is convinced Izzy hates her because of what she said (and it’s probably not even true, like. Yaz hasn’t ever kissed a _boy_ let alone a girl so she probably can’t know yet. Probably) and she regrets it everyday. Everyday until she gets a text from Izzy, an invitation to a party at the house of the older brother to one of their classmates.

She goes (of course she goes, her _best friend_ invited her) and she doesn’t push away the cup handed to her when she walks in. The drink tastes of Snapple and something else that reminds her of nail polish remover and she almost spits it out (but doesn’t). The older brother of the kid in their class must’ve provided alcohol, and these fifteen year olds were laying into it heavily.

The scene turns from loud music and dancing to Yaz sitting next to a boy on the ratty brown sofa and Izzy suggests 7 minutes in heaven, and Yaz hasn’t ever kissed _anyone_ before and the drink is making her head spin and her fingers tingly and she agrees.

She’s led into a closet off the hallway and waits between the old coats and Christmas decorations. The handle turns, her heart speeds up, and Izzy steps in with her usual charming smile. Yaz realizes, says, “oh, I thought you were the person I was supposed to kiss.”

She doesn’t miss the predatory grin, and later she will think over that smile every day, wondering what _really_ went through Izzy’s head.

(wondering if it was planned.)

( _of course_ it was planned.)

“I _am_ the person you’re supposed to kiss,” she says, all blonde hair and blue eyes and freckles illuminated by the single bulb on the ceiling.

And then Yaz has her first kiss. It’s…softer than she imagined, and not at _all_ like the movies make it out to be.

Then, as quick as the kiss started, Izzy is pushing her off, already storming out of the room and yelling, “she really _is_ a lesbian!” to the room of laughing teenagers.

The entire scene happens in slow motion; Yaz opening the door and exiting the closet, the kids laughing and pointing at her, the girls looking disgusted, _Izzy_ looking disgusted.

She tells Sonya when she sneaks back in, a little drunk and in tears. She tells her while they lay in Sonya’s bed and Yaz cries and chokes out, “I’m _gay_ , Son,” and Sonya rubs her back like their mum does and lets her sleep in her bed for the night.

If Yaz thought one humiliating night was all to come, she’d be dead wrong. She finds herself at the middle of the gossip circle when she gets to school on Monday, and when she goes to use the restroom the other girls leave immediately, muttering about “fucking dykes watching us take a piss”. Gym turns into a nightmare quickly and she starts changing in the toilet stall and leaving the changing room before the others even arrive. She gets pushed in the hallways and the words follow her home and she sinks deeper under, trying so badly to swim as everyone pushes her under the water.

She becomes reckless, sneaking out and into boys bedrooms at night to make out and try to _fit in_ in some way, and if she’s the school slut (going through boys like a catalogue, the girls in her year say) then she’s not the school lesbian.

She gets exhausted, fed up with the bullies and her ex-best friend and the lies spread around the school (“she watched me change in gym. It was so gross!”). She runs away. Or, well, tries to. She doesn’t get far, sitting on the side of the road with her bag and coat and waiting for _something._ To be hit by a car or picked up as a hitchhiker, either or.

Instead, she gets a policewoman sitting down next to her, telling her it’ll get better and it’ll be okay and she’ll make it through. She flips her hair out of her face and snaps, “I don’t want your little speech.”

The policewoman sighs like she knows what Yaz is going through (she has _no idea,_ Yaz tells herself). She says, “what if this moment, when you want to run away from everyone including yourself, is just that? A moment. What if we find a way to get you through it and out the other side?”

Yaz stays silent. She doesn’t want the speech and she doesn’t want this woman trying to bring her back home and she doesn’t want to go back to school where she’ll be bullied and fall even farther behind in her classes. She doesn’t want it (and maybe _it_ is life in general, really).

“I’ve been where you are. Moments change,” the PC says, looking out towards the road. “Help is out there, you know. As much or as little as you need.”

“I’m not listening to ya,” Yaz grumbles, turning her head away.

The officer sighs again. “Would cash make a difference?"

Yaz turns her head and studies the woman curiously, brows furrowed and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’ll make you a deal — look me up in three years, if I’m wrong I’ll give you 50 quid. I mean I’d say more but the pay is rubbish.”

“Get another job then,” Yaz snaps.

“Can’t, love it too much.” She turns to Yaz. “But if I’m right, you owe me 50p.”

So she goes back to school, back to the bullying and bad grades and her sister punching her in the arm when she shows up on the doorstep that night with PC Patel.

Her parents hug her and tell her they love her, no matter what (and Yaz doesn’t know how they can _say_ that when she’s going to ruin them with this information), and Sonya sleeps in her room that night and when they’re laying down face to face she asks, “did you run because you’re gay?”

Yaz doesn’t answer. She doesn’t _know_ the answer.

She graduates and becomes a PC and her thinks about PC Patel a lot during the next year and a half. She considers bringing her the 50p more than once and every time it doesn’t feel like it’s time — doesn’t feel _right_.

And then she meets the Doctor and they take off in her blue police box spaceship and Yaz thinks _finally_. _finally, away_ (where she had said she wanted to go all those years ago).

They get stranded on a deserted planet, meet Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, and return home to Sheffield. They deal with the big spider problem and her mum asks if she and the Doctor are dating and the Doctor looks confused, asks, “I dunno, are we?” and Yaz has to choke out, “we’re just _friends_ ”. They detonate the sonic mine ( _the Doctor_ detonates the sonic mine) and almost blow themselves up on a medical spaceship. They go to Punjab and witness the wedding and death and Yaz feels stronger, more whole, knowing what she does. Knowing what hardship she came from.

(if her nan can be that strong and still come out the other end, so can she.)

Yaz comes out again that night, sitting with her mum and dad at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. She says, “I’m gay.” and it’s the most free she’s felt in a while, like she can finally _breathe_ now after so long of holding it in. Sonya snorts from the living room and Najia shoots her a scolding, “ _Sonya_.”

Her dad doesn’t look furious and her mum didn’t burst into tears so she’s taking their silence as a good sign, really.

Her mum clears her throat. “Are you telling us because you’re with the Doctor?”

Yaz almost spits her tea out. Choking, she says, “ _mum_ , I’m not with the Doctor.”

Najia nods. Her dad reaches out and takes one of her hands.

“Yasmin, we love you no matter what,” he says, softer than anything Yaz has ever heard him speak.

“Also we already knew,” Sonya adds from the living room.

“ _Sonya,_ ” their mother scolds again.

* * *

They go on the run, after the motorcycles and almost plane crash. Yaz tells them both one night when they all aren’t sleeping. She says, “I need to tell you both something, not because it’s important but because I feel like I’m lying if I don’t say anything.” They wait patiently for her to continue. “I’m gay,” she says confidently (years away from that 15 year old who tentatively said it in her bedroom with Izzy).

“Cheers, right on,” Ryan says, then looks back at his phone.

“Thanks for sharing, Yaz,” Graham adds.

And she feels better, truly. They don’t make a fuss about it and neither does she and when Ryan meets the traveling Gabriella he texts Yaz and says, “found you a girlfriend mate”.

Yaz and Sonya sit at the table with their food on the anniversary of Yaz’s runaway scare and Sonya jokes, “guess you couldn’t run away from the gay.”

“Please shut up,” Yaz says good-naturedly, and then more serious, “I dream about it, sometimes.”

Sonya looks up from her plate, eye understanding and way too old for her age, Yaz thinks (but isn’t that how she’s always been? Years ago in the same bed while Yaz cried, smelling like alcohol and hurt, and Sonya calmed her down?)

She relives the part in her nightmares on the ship with the omnipotent god. Instead of leaving, however, she’d forced to stay, to listen to the teenagers mock her and call her names and point and laugh. In her nightmare she’s forced to live through it again and again and again and this time her parents don’t tell her they love her, Sonya reacts badly in her bed and calls her names and she can’t get away from it. In her nightmares she’s trapped like that, fifteen and hurting and unable to get away.

They save Percy Shelley and the Doctor gives up the cyberium and then they go to the future because what else _can_ they do? They find desolation and hurt and the last remaining humans and they do what they all do best — _help._

Of course it doesn’t go to plan (nothing ever does) but they get to the portal and Yaz is the first to step through, first to find the Doctor on the ground and first to touch her wrist, feel for a pulse, say her name.

The last time she comes out is on Gallifrey and she’s watching the Doctor think of a plan and her own slower human brain is coming to the same conclusions and she realizes what’s happening before the Doctor tells them the plan and _this is not happening._

And really, just like in those stupid romcoms Sonya loved but Yaz hated, it all clicks into place at one. Every spared look and simple touch and, “I’m with you no matter what.” plays on repeat in her head like a movie she only _just_ understands the plot of, mere minutes to the end. She reaches out, unable to stop herself, and grabs the Doctors arm — another simple touch to play on repeat for years to come. The Doctor spins, yells, “get _off_ me, Yaz!” but she doesn’t drop her hand, doesn’t let go (read: can’t).

The Doctor says, “and I would sacrifice myself, for you, _my fam_ ,” and looks at each one of them, her eyes landing on Yaz with a sad rueful smile.

And before she really leaves — before Yaz willingly lets her go because she understands heartache and sacrifice and _love —_ Yaz pulls her in by the hand still holding on and cups the Doctors cheek in her other and kisses her like it’s the last (and they both know it will be).

Internally, she’s screaming. Because of the situation or the fact that she doesn’t know how the Doctor will react (but she _can’t_ let her leave without knowing), Yaz isn’t sure. But the anxiety and worry disappear when the Doctor grabs onto the front lapels of Yaz’s jacket and kisses her with fervor (because she’s going to blow herself up and they both know probably won’t survive it and that _sucks_ ). They part and lean their foreheads together and the Doctor says, “so, you’re gay, huh?”

Yaz laughs (something that feels so _wrong_ in the situation but fits perfectly with the Doctor). “Glad you figured it out,” she says and pulls away, eyes wet and steeling herself to watch the Doctor die.

(Truly, if you’d told 15 year old Yaz that someday she’d be kissing a thousands of years old alien in a spaceship before said alien sacrifices herself to save the human race, she would’ve asked what drugs you were taking.)

And when they get back to Sheffield, Yaz thinks she’s done coming out for a while (maybe now that everyone important around her knows). She sets up documents and money for the human survivors and does exactly what the Doctor told them, _lives._


End file.
